Remuage by hand at Taittinger's Comtes de Champagne Cave

Reims Cathedral

Pre-Christmas Champagne

26 - 28 November 2011

This Pre-Christmas Champagne tour coincides with the Reims Christmas Market, a fabulous event with 125 stalls, selling gifts, decorations and traditional food at Place d’Erlon and the Condorcet and Theodore Dubois streets. There are also orchestral and choral concerts and events in the beautiful cathedral.

Champagne is fun to drink and a fascinating wine to see being made and being easy to get to makes for a great weekend. Our base for the weekend is a comfortable 3* hotel in the centre of the lively attractive city of Reims.

Our aim is to taste a wide spectrum of Champagnes, to visit a good cross section of Houses, from those that forged Champagne’s reputation such as Taittinger, Pol Roger and Veuve Clicquot as well as to search out quality growers and rising stars in the villages.

You will taste at least 20 champagnes over the course of the weekend, starting at breakfast. You will receive a special welcome and generous tastings at houses that we have been visiting for many years.

Your Comparative Tastings

We want to show you as broad a spectrum of Champagnes over the weekend as possible. So, as always on Arblaster & Clarke Champagne weekends, your Wine Guide will show you a selection of Champagnes in order to introduce the various styles and different Houses or Growers in two tastings, one each evening. No two of our tastings are alike and no two Wine Guides have the same approach to presenting them. We like to choose some unusual Champagnes for you to taste not just the famous names. Most will be to your liking though perhaps some may not. You can normally learn more from these than those you liked, but hopefully you’ll find one or two that you think are fabulous!

Evening Meals

Reims has a wealth of wonderful restaurants, brasseries and bistros from Michelin double rossette restaurants (early booking essential!) to more reasonably priced gourmet restaurants and traditional style brasseries. We provide a list of all our tried and tested ones before the trip with phone numbers, so you can book ahead if you wish. However, we will make a reservation at two of our favourite (reasonably priced) brasseries and you are very welcome to join our wine guide or tour manager for dinner where they will select some interesting wines.

This again is one of the great advantages of an Arblaster & Clarke fully escorted tour, we give you the flexibility to dine alone if this is what your prefer, or the fun of being part of a lively party who generally all get on together really well, especially after the champagne tasting has broken the ice! This is especially appreciated by those clients who travel alone with us.

Champagne Breakfasts

Breakfast is served each morning at the hotel on the top floor, from where there is a superb view over the town and out towards the cathedral. The A&C tour manager is on hand to exclusively serve our clients with a glass of champagne to go with their buffet breakfast – morning’s will never seem the same again!

Champagne Vilmart

One of our favourite growers is Champagne Vilmart, in Rilly-La-Montagne. Established in the 1890s Vilmart is still a family run house. They are one of the few remaining traditional producers who both ferment the wines and mature the champagnes in oak barrels and tonneaux. Vilmart also prides itself on being an organic producer, using no herbicides or chemicals on their vineyards. The Vilmart champagnes are full of richness, finesse and complexity.

Free Time for Lunch in Reims

Lunchtime is free in Reims. You will have time to explore Reims and choose a cafe table to sit at and people watch while you enjoy some local food and a glass of champagne, perhaps!

Our afternoon visit departs mid afternoon and of course if you decide you would rather linger over your lunch, explore Reims further, or simply rest, you can of course choose to miss the visit and meet up with again later for dinner if you prefer.

Champagne Taittinger

We visit the beautiful cellars of Champagne Taittinger, which weave for kilometres under the city of Reims. They were carved out of the chalk by the Romans and now house the prestige Cuvée of Taittinger, the ‘Comtes de Champagne’. This is the perfect introduction to Champagne; we see how it is made and then taste a couple of champagnes in their elegant tasting room.

Champagne Billecart-Salmon

The Billecart family has lived in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ since the 16th century. A small, family-owned house that always produces high-quality Champagnes of great finesse. Billecart-Salmon is particularly renowned for the delicate style of its rosé – the essence of their style has always been its meticulous production, from the double “débourbage” to its long, slow, very cool fermentation. We have watched them rise to super-star status since we first started visiting them in the late 1980s.

Lunch at Champagne Tattinger

For lunch we are invited to the magnificent château of Champagne Taittinger. The Great War saw it become the headquarters of the Marechal Joffre who was joined by his young cavalry officer – Pierre Charles Taittinger, who fell in love with the building and vowed one day to own it. 20 years later he realised his dream and in 1934, two hundered years after it was built the Chateau became the property of the Taittinger family This very special lunch will accompanied by a comprehensive range of Taittinger champagnes.

Our visit here includes a buffet lunch, with the full range of the house champagnes to enjoy with your meal. This is not a restaurant but a private invitation to lunch as guests of the family.

After the visit we continue our journey directly back to Calais on on to Dover and London arriving late evening.